Stuff You Should Know - Karaoke: Tuesday Night Fever

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Listen in and learn all about the fascinating history of everybody's favorite pastime... karaoke! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Chuckers, Chuck Tran. Yeah, I had to spice it up a little bit with some old school stuff.

And no one else is here with us. We're alone out there in the ether and this is Stuff You Should Know. Although my prediction is, you know, we started recording a bit early today since we're on our own. I bet guest producer Dave and short stuff producer Dave is going to chime in in about five minutes. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I look forward to hearing what he says. What's your deal with karaoke? I sort of know, but I think the people should know. We should exchange stories. Oh, okay. I like karaoke. I particularly like karaoke in the K-Box, which we'll talk about, which is basically it's a little private karaoke room for you and your friends. Have some great memories of karaoke like that. But I'll do it in front of an audience

if I get a drink or two with me, you know, not too much though. You go too much, you start trying to like, you know, fight the piano player or something like that. Oh, so like live karaoke? Yeah, I've mentioned it a couple of times, but Sig Gold's Request Room in Manhattan is the place to go for live piano karaoke. It's just a beautiful, wonderful place. So if you haven't been there, go check it out. It's great about as good as live karaoke gets, like live instrument karaoke. All right. So I haven't been there. I will go. Still? I forget, you know. I thought you would have gone this past year. Yeah, right. I haven't been there, never been in a K-Box. Really? No, never had the private carry.

You know, we'll pronounce it karaoke even though it's karaoke. Karaoke. Karaoke, but we're not going to do that. No, we're not. Because I think Dave Ruse helps us out. He's like, you can pronounce it correctly, but don't be expected to be invited out to karaoke night with your friends anymore. Right. After you practice your karate. Right, exactly. So I have done live karaoke a few years ago on my birthday. We went to the one that has the rock band in the Virginia Highlands. I don't know that one. Yeah. I mean, they have the full on band. It's rock and roll live karaoke. Sounds fine. One of the local Atlanta DJs English Nick is there to serve as

sort of a backup singer, and they can mix his vocals in more if you're really bad, because no one wants to hear that kind of thing. Sure. But I get up there and did Surrender by Cheap Trick, and I saw him at one point even stand away from the mic, and I was like, I've got this. Oh, wow. He like went and did something else. I maybe ate some corn chips or something. A tip of the cat. But my deal with karaoke is I used to be scared to death to try it. And that was when I had severe stage fright, performance anxiety, which I completely got over because now I'm in a band that sings in front of people. You and I get on stage in front of 1400 people. And it doesn't bother me anymore. I think

I'd still probably be a little nervous to do like a acoustic open mic thing. Yeah. And you should be for a number of reasons. But it's just funny how I used to be so scared and really overthink karaoke, like sit in the room, anxiety, sweat. I really want to do it, but I won't put my name down. Right. And then the night comes and goes, and I don't do it, then I have this guilt and bad feelings. It was a thing. Wow. How old are you at the time? Oh, I mean, this was in my 20s and into my early 30s, I think. Yeah. Yeah. When I moved to LA is when I really started, I guess it was in my 20s because when I moved to LA is when I finally did it. I was like, this is fine. And I sing better than a lot of these

people. Yeah. It's a great feeling to, you know, be done and have the people you're with be like, I had no idea you could do that. That's really impressive. Yeah. It's great. It's fun. Yeah. I enjoy it thoroughly. Do you have a standard karaoke song that you do or two? Yeah. I mean, I usually try to do, and I think we've talked about this, the under pressure by Queen and Bowie, and I do kind of both parts. Oh, wow. At the same time, you do like the Tibetan throat chaining kind of thing. But I have made some mistakes too. I tried to do foreigners cold as I said of friends, not at their wedding, but wedding weekend at a bar in Philly. And I just was feeling it and was like,

I had forgotten how high that song is. It was great. Yeah. That can be a problem when you like start in your range, but then you forget, oh, it keeps going up. That's a, that's a real karaoke problem. And actually, I saw a check that if you do that enough times, you can get what are called karaoke polyps, which are really, yeah, it's basically like polyps that grow on your vocal chords from straining your vocal cords by trying to sing like a professional without the training of a professional singer. So it can be deadly dangerous. Maybe not the deadly part, but it can be dangerous. Yeah. And I used to do the mental gymnastics of kind of like stepping outside and going through the song mentally real quick. Can I hit the parts? For sure. For sure. And you should,

I think just as a responsible karaoke singer, you kind of do need to make sure that you can sing the song because yeah, it's kind of funny to you if you do a bad karaoke performance. But the point of karaoke is to like blow everybody's socks off. Like just, just tear the roof off the suckers is kind of my personal motto every time I grab the mic. Yeah. And you know, I've had some times where I've seen some performances at the live karaoke thing. There was this country guy that clearly drives in from, you know, country Georgia to do this. And he had a cowboy hat on and he did want to dead or alive. Oh yeah. You could tell that's his deal. He comes into the city, he crushes it and then goes back to the farm the next day and everyone's like, who was that lonesome

cowboy who just wandered through town? Who was that mask stranger? It's pretty cool to see an everyday person just get up there and really kill it. Yeah. And I'm sure that guy has to go out of town because he'd probably get beat up at his town if he tried to do that there. You know, he's got like this, like being anonymous to kind of enables that karaoke gusto, I think as well. Yeah. So you said something earlier. You compared Karaoke and Karate and there's a good reason for that because karate, Karate means empty hand and Karaoke is actually short for Karaoke. Man, I even practiced this. Karaoke astura, which is like a Romanji when people in Japan take an English word and just kind of japan it up a little bit. So instead of orchestra, it's okay astura and

kara, so it means empty and okay astura means orchestra. So it's an empty orchestra and that's really what Karaoke is. It's slang for empty orchestra and it actually predates the concept of karaoke that we think of today. Yeah. Apparently in the early 50s, there was a pit orchestra in Osaka. They said we want, I'm not sure what they wanted, you would assume better wages or more bathroom breaks or something and they went on strike and the theater replaced them with a sound system and it was from Matsuda Electronics and apparently as the story goes, an executive from Matsuda came there, heard the system and said it's the orchestra, there's music playing, but the orchestra pit is empty and thus the term was coined. Empty orchestra.

That was in the 50s. I think 1952 was it? Yes. So karaoke as we understand it today didn't come along for good almost two decades later. So there was this idea that anytime you had pre-recorded music, especially if it was played in instead of a, you know, where a live performer would play, that that was karaoke. Karaoke. So it was kind of a handy term that a guy named Desuka Inoue used when he came up with karaoke and the idea of who invented karaoke, who came up with it, is not just widely settled, but for the most part there is like those who know know, cite Desuka Inoue as the guy who actually came up with this, as we understand it. Yeah, I did see, you know, there were a couple of other people in the late 60s that kind of

messed around with machines that kind of did what the karaoke machine does, but yeah, his story is great. He's a, if you look him up a picture, he's a pretty cool looking customer and in Osaka in the 50s, he was in high school and he was a drummer in a rock band and then tried to be a musician professionally for a little while, but like so many musicians that tried that for a little while ended up back at home in his late 20s living with his parents in Kobe. Yeah, but he gave it a good decade long try, you know, he was out on the road. I read this really great kind of mini biography or autobiography from the early 2000s that was published in The Appendix. It's called Voice Hero. Look that up. He's just a charming guy, but he tried it for

about 10 years and it just didn't work out because most of the money was pocketed by the older, more established musicians and it just, he wasn't going anywhere. I think he said that he realized that no matter how much he practiced and he really practiced, he would never be as good as somebody who had natural talent and it just wasn't for him. So he decided to try something else, but he didn't want to give up playing entirely. He wanted to try to make a living somehow from playing music and it just so happens that his parents living in Kobe placed him at this really particularly good spot for karaoke to begin, which is Kobe, which is about 30 minutes outside of Osaka where the very famous Kobe beef comes from. And at the time in Kobe and for a while before that, there was a

popular pastime of sing-alongs, which is basically like you go to a bar, a snack is what they were called, and there'd be somebody playing a piano or a guitar or something like that and everybody would sing popular songs along with the mini band that was playing. Yeah, but that was like groups singing together, not like a single person either delighting or embarrassing themselves. But he got into this scene a little bit and it was clearly a popular thing. So he's like, I'm a musician. I guess he played piano too and he learned a few hundred really popular songs on piano and then started performing as the accompaniment. I think that's the Latin plural. Accompaniment? What's the word for the person? The accompanist. Accompanist? The accompaniment

minimist, eponymous. None of these sound right now. It's accompanist. Okay, that just sounds weird to me, but you know how that goes. Your brain just broke. It did a little bit. So he was doing this as the piano guy, the piano man if you will, and one day this customer comes in who had been frequenting these nights where he was playing piano and he was like, listen, I'm a business guy. I got to go to a different city for the sales meeting and I got to take these other people out to go out drinking and singing after and you're my guy. I can only sing along with you. So would you mind recording something for me that I can bring along? And he said, sure. So we recorded some stuff on a reel to reel, gave it to him. The trip was a big hit and the guy came back and said,

I need more of these. And that was literally the aha moment. He grabbed Desuka Inouye by his lapels and shook him and said, give me more, man. I need some more. And he didn't. Apparently, right at this time as he was being shaken, Desuka left his body, asked really project elsewhere into the universe where he was greeted by the same entity that led to the creation of ketchup. And the same entity has ketchup and karaoke under its belt because it met with Desuka and said, this is like pay attention to what's happening right now. Invent karaoke. And Desuka basically came back to his body and said, I have it. I have this great idea. I'm going to invent a machine that is basically me, what this guy wants me to do live that I can multiply, create a bunch of

different machines that do the same thing. And it's going to be the first karaoke machine ever. And that's what he did. He came up with something called the Juke 8, which is a great name. Yeah, it's cool looking. I mean, the idea, I mean, you can look up pictures of the guy with this thing. And it's, you know, it's about the size of a small guitar amp or something. Which is not bad. You'd think it'd be the size of like a smart car or something for the first prototype. Back in the day. But it was simple. I mean, they had amps at the time. They really just combined a few technologies, which was an eight track player. Right. From a car, a car eight track player is what they started with.

Oh, yeah. And a, which are really no different than any other eight track players. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe they worked better in motion. I don't know. No, but that's probably why those cars were so big, because they had to be that big back in the day to hold the eight track. So, you know, it was like an eight track player mixed with a, you know, an amp or a PA, a small PA. And his idea was, you know, he called it the Juke 8, because it was kind of like a jukebox, is that you would put money in it like a jukebox to get a certain amount of time on the clock, which I think was kind of brilliant instead of like

a song. Like, I think the idea is that people would just keep feeding it. Yeah. He actually specifically said that he chose five minutes, a hundred yen, about 35 cents, bought you five minutes of singing time so that you'd be part way through the second song and have to put more money in to finish the second song. He was a sharp tack in a lot of ways. Well, in some way. In some way. So, I think they took a couple of months to build each. They cost him about 425 bucks, which is about 2700 today. And he said, I gotta get some of these tracks recorded. So, he got a bunch of his friends to record, you know, musicians, to record these instrumental tracks, started shopping it around, and sold all 11 of those

machines in pretty quick order. Yeah. I think I don't know if he sold them or if he took them as like basically proof of concept. Like collect the money. Yeah. Something like that. Either way, he did get them in 11 different clubs around Kobe. And everybody was glad to have them there to look at. And that was about it. They just sat there and nobody did anything with them. Nobody knew quite what to do with them. And even if they did, I think it took, you know, how much gumption it takes in an established karaoke place when other people are doing it. Imagine being literally the first person to do karaoke. Like you probably would, you know, it just took a little bit. So, Desika hired somebody. He said, a pretty girl in a sexy outfit

is how he put it in that one autobiography. And had her go around to all these 11 clubs and basically like sing karaoke. And she did it because he hired her too. But apparently, she came back and was like, I would do that again, just for fun. That was a lot of fun. And from that point on, basically, the whole concept of karaoke took off, at least in Kobe. Yeah. There were about 200 of these machines in and around Kobe in pretty short order. And I think it's a good time to take a break. I think it is too, because karaoke is just simmering. The lid is like rattling on the pot right now. Yeah. It's about to blow. So, all right, we'll be right back.

Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, now when you're on the road, driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck. It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. Okay, Chuck. So there's a rendered fat spitting out the sides of the pot and steam going everywhere. I just burned my hand on it. Let's tear the lid off of this sucker, which is tangential to my karaoke motto of tearing the roof off the sucker. That's right. So they're going gangbusters in

Kobe. And like you said, it's not too far from Osaka, which is a bigger city. And a couple of entrepreneurs from Kobe said, this is great, but we need to get this to Osaka. And they brought a Juke 8 around, kind of showed it around. And it really hit big to the tune of they were moving about 25,000 of these a year pretty quickly. Yeah. Because so remember, I said that Kobe was like a perfect place for karaoke to kind of be incubated because people already did these sing-alongs. In Tokyo and Osaka, it wasn't like that. They liked watching an actual band perform or listening to actual songs in the jukebox. But when these guys, it could not find the name of this club. But that when they opened essentially the first karaoke club in Osaka, I guess it just hit at just the

right chord, just the right time. And all of a sudden Osaka was a karaoke town and in very short order Tokyo was as well. And because it kind of blew up for the first time in Osaka, Osaka is considered the birthplace of karaoke, even though it really was born in Kobe like very plainly. Yeah. So, you mentioned earlier that he was a pretty sharp tech in some ways. In others, and I'm not saying he wasn't smart, but he didn't patent the thing. His brother-in-law said he really should patent this Juke 8. He said, you know what, patent law is really complicated here in Japan. It's super expensive. You know, all I can patent is the business model because all of these, you know, it's just a combination of other components that already have patents on them.

Which is, you know, I guess it's just different. I know just from my Shark Tank viewing that in America, if you put together these different or any different technologies in just the right way, you can get a patent, you know, not always. But I've seen patents go through where I'm like, well, that's just this, this, and this. They're like, yes, but we can bind them. And the patent often recognized it. Yeah. I think it's called an improvement or something like that. And I actually read this really interesting article, Chuck, in Aeon magazine like, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago, where it basically made the case that we stopped actually innovating, we humans did, back in maybe the 60s or 70s, and that everything we've invented since then

is basically just putting existing stuff together. And they use the example of the iPhone, which basically is like, it's amazing. It's this amazing technology, but it's, you know, it's a camera. It's also a phone. It's also your email. It's also text. Like it's all these existing things just put together in one convenient place. And that that's a really great example of how we actually stopped like creating new stuff and just basically repurposing and repackaging existing stuff. And that hopefully we're due for another huge technological advancement sometime soon if we don't just decline from utter decadence before we get the chance to do that. Yeah. I remember there was a meme a few years ago, or probably a little more than that,

what that showed up this, the front page of a Radio Shack magazine at or whatever. And it was in at the bottom, it said, all of these are now on your smartphone. Right. And it was like 40 things, you know, from like tape recorders to microphones to cameras to you know, thing, what's the thing that tells the temperature? The A and a companyist. But basically everything, you know, on that page is now on an iPhone. It's kind of like, well, now I see why Radio Shack is no longer around. Yeah, poor Radio Shack. They really, they did a lot there and they got kind of dissed at the end.

And it was pretty great. I love that story. It was. And they had a really cool logo too. Agreed. So you said that he did not patent the karaoke machine, the Juke 8, right? Yeah. I mean, he made plenty of money still though. Yeah. So yes, he's still manufactured Juke 8s and sold them. And you know, he sold tens of thousands of them a year and they were his machine. So basically for a long time until basically, until other competitors figured out that there wasn't a patent on this thing, if you wanted a karaoke machine, you had to go to Daisuke Inoue, right? And buy one. So yes, he definitely made money and he continued to make money over the decades and through the

years selling like equipment or CDs, stuff like that, right? So he was fine. And he actually seems very zen about this, but it is entirely clear that had he patented this, and I think this really kind of drove home to me just how globally popular karaoke is. He would have been a billionaire many times over just from inventing karaoke and kicking back and taking the royalties from the initial patent. I agree though. He doesn't seem like that kind of guy from reading about because once you do that, your job then is fighting people in court for a living. Yeah. Yeah. And who wants to do that? Now, he didn't seem interested in it. He also wondered, I think in that one autobiography

article, if it would have taken off, had he had a patent on it, it might not have just gotten as big as it was. I think that, which is a pretty, an argument in favor against intellectual property laws, but I think we should do an episode just on intellectual property one day. Okay. Let's do it. Let's do it, Chuck. You know, who didn't feel that way was an inventor from the Philippines named Roberto Del Rosario because he did get a patent on his karaoke sing-along system in 75. And I guess he, I don't know his full story, but surely he knew what was going on with the Juke Eight and knew that he could kind of capitalize on that. He, I read a little bio on him and apparently he claims that he had no idea about karaoke

as far as Japan is concerned and that he invented it independently. So who knows about that, but he's also very frequently cited as an inventor of karaoke incorrectly. And then there's another guy too who we'll meet. Actually, let's meet him right now. There's a guy named Kay Takagi. Come on in Takagi. So Kay is a, he was a Japanese businessman who happened to manufacture karaoke machines. And the reason that he's frequently cited as the inventor of karaoke is because he and another guy named Earl Glick are the two men who introduced karaoke to the West through a machine, debuting in 1982 called the singing machine. Yeah. And we should say that, you know, Dave, one of our great writers helped us put this together and he got a

lot of this stuff from this point forward from a book by a man named Brian Raftery called The Don't Stop Believing, Colin. How karaoke conquered the world and changed my life. And I think this is kind of one of the seminal books on karaoke. That's the impression I have as well. But, you know, it came to America, like you said, it had been spreading throughout Japan. And obviously, with international business travel and international travel period, it's the kind of thing that eventually made its way to the States. And this film producer, producer of Children of the Corn, Earl Glick was? Yeah, that's sort of his most most noteworthy movie. Wow. Because, I mean, well, he was, yeah, I mean, I had respect for him just being the head of

Hal Roach Studios. Hal Roach Studios were responsible for Laurel and Hardy and our gang, the Little Rascals. But by the time Earl Glick was presiding over it, it was like basically teetering on bankruptcy and resting on its laurels. Had no idea that he produced Children of the Corn. So yeah, mad respect to Earl Glick. So in 1980, and again, this is a great story. I hope it really went this way. He was on a cruise ship and he was playing Blackjack, ran out of dough and needed to double down and needed more money, because he had a great hand, apparently. And there was, like you said, a man named, is it Kai or Kay? Kay, which is short for Kisuburo. So Kay is nearby. He said, here's three large. I can cover you on that. Gave him three grand, Glick won. And obviously,

that formed a friendship. He was like, you're a great guy just to give me $3,000. Yeah. And Kay was like, you're a great guy to pay me back. Exactly. And they bonded there on the cruise ship. And when they hit Tokyo and docked, Takagi took Mr. Glick back to his office, said, hey, look at this karaoke thing. It's pretty great. You should get these going in the States. And Glick was like, I'm not so sure about this. But Takagi was not to be deterred. And over the next year would kind of send him sales figures to the point where Glick was like, hey, there's some real money to be made here. Yeah. So, I mean, at least in Japan, by this time 1980, 81, 82,

karaoke had been a huge sensation in Japan for a full decade. It changed the culture. Desuka Inoue basically points to the invention of karaoke as giving all of these intensely overworked Japanese office workers a way to blow off steam and just feel better about themselves that they otherwise didn't have. So, it really took off in Japan. But it was questionable whether it was going to take off in America. So, it wasn't like a given thing that just because the sales figures were high in Japan that they were going to translate into America. And at first, actually, that is how it went. When they came up with the singing machine in 1982, apparently, Kay Takagi would demonstrate it on the street and get booed. Because as he recounted later,

it seemed like the American public took offense or was generally agitated when people who weren't professionals publicly performed music. And that was the whole basis of karaoke. It still is. It's reasonable though. I mean, here's my deal. If someone, there can be a certain amount of bad that's still kind of entertaining and fun. Depends. But there are some that's so bad where it's just you're waiting and waiting for that song to end. It's just so painful. Sure. And that's when you boo to let them know that you need to stop this. No, there's a certain booing threshold for sure, especially when you know that they are essentially deliberately singing badly. They deserve to be booing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. That's a different thing. If someone is just super drunk and being

really obnoxious and has a microphone in their hand, that's different. It's when they're trying and they're bad. That's when you shouldn't boo them because you will totally shatter their spirit forever. Yeah. So it's up to you as an individual to cast that judgment at that moment. Exactly. Just use it wisely is all I'm saying. That's right. All right. So the it's not taking off quite yet. He's demonstrating it. Like you said, not doing a good job. As legend has it, Glick supposedly even took it to Frank Sinatra, who we'll figure in always figures in at karaoke, it seems like. Yeah. And Frank was like, no, thank you. He said, what is this hunk of junk, baby? You can do Sammy. I'll do Frank from now on. Okay. That was actually me doing a bad

Phil Hartman impression of Frank Sinatra. Well, mine is just Billy Crystal doing doing Sammy Davis Jr. So. Oh, I like to think of you doing Sammy Davis Jr. Well, it's funny because Sammy was actually there when Frank turned it down and he was like, I don't know, man, you could make some real dough with this thing. And Frank said, don't contradict me, Sammy. Not in front of Glick. That's pretty good. Phil Hartman. I think Joe Piscopo used to do it back in the day. Yeah. I always like Phil Hartman. Phil Hartman was a great member. He was doing some like round table discussion about current topics or something. And Sinead O'Connor was one of

the panel members and he kept calling her Sinead and Q-Ball. She was like trying to have this, you know, legitimate conversation or whatever. He just kept dismissing her. Jan Hooks, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. Great. That was back when he was really mad at her because she tore up the picture of the Pope protesting abuse. Oh, yeah. And it's like, maybe we should revisit that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. You know, I think Sinead was kind of right on the right on target there. She's still around. I can't remember. I was reading about her not too long ago. And I mean, she's still, if not putting out music, I think she's an artist at

least. She's still creating. Still creating things. Yeah. So karaoke takes hold in at least on the West Coast. And I saw some places like we're going to cover the East Coast and the West Coast. I saw that before this even happened. The Midwest. Yeah. Did you see that? No. I was totally joking. Really? Yeah. I saw an Archive New York Times article about the place we're going to talk about in Manhattan. And they said that it had already been sort of making the rounds in the Midwest because of Japanese auto workers. Oh, wow. That's really impressive. So... But it was in the Midwest and no one knew about it. So, yeah. So did this predate dimples on the West Coast though? Or did it kind of also simultaneously go on in LA?

Well, if dimples, what year was dimples? Dimples, I have the impression, was in the mid-80s, I would say. Probably let's go with 85. No, no. I'm sorry. 87 is when it really took off. Well, the article in the New York Times was from 87 and they said that it had already been a thing in the Midwest. Wow. That's really, hats off to Pika for innovating with karaoke in the US. Probably Detroit maybe. I guess that's kind of... I don't know where the Japanese auto manufacturing was back then. I wonder if it was Japanese executives coming over and talking about karaoke or American auto executives going over to Japan and learning about karaoke, then coming back to the Midwest and being like, let's do something tonight.

Right. I put on a bunch of mufflers today. Exactly. I'm ready to unwind and build something. That's really interesting, man. Nice nugget. So, dimples, like we mentioned, it was until, I think, the mid-2000s, a bar in Burbank. 2014, from what I saw. Oh, is that when it closed? Yeah. Okay. In favor of a whole food to be built over the top of it. A whole food? Well, they're multiple whole foods. So, yeah, whole foods was built over. So, this was in Burbank right across from Warner Brothers Studios and the owner there, Sal Ferrero, bought a bunch of these karaoke cassettes. He started advertising like, hey, we're America's first karaoke bar. You're going to love it. People didn't catch on at first, but

they kind of took a page from the earlier days with Dice K when they said, well, there are plenty of young attractive actors and actresses out here. So, let's just get some of those in to perform. And it took off. People like, well, I want to be a star too. Right, exactly. People started hitting the mini stage. So, yeah. So, this was, dimples was as known as America's first karaoke bar, apparently incorrectly. But it certainly was America's first widely known karaoke bar because it was in LA. But it was extremely old-fashioned in a lot of ways. Number one, there were no K-boxes, which we'll talk about in a minute. It was you performing on stage in front of the whole bar that's considered

an old-fashioned style karaoke bar. Number two, you probably don't necessarily know every single lyric to the song you're singing. So, they would hand you a book with laminated pages with the lyrics. So, you would be reading from a big binder while you were trying to sing and perform at the same time. That's certainly very old-fashioned. And then also, number three, I think there were only two now that I say number three. I think it was those two that made it super old-fashioned. So, you perform in front of strangers and then you had to read from a book. And so, dimples apparently really took off. And then karaoke also really took off around the world when they added something called CD plus G, which is compact disc plus graphics. Oh, that was the

third one. They would literally use 8 tracks or cassettes of recorded karaoke music. And then, all of a sudden, in the late 80s, you had a disc that you could buy that had a whole bunch of karaoke songs. But then also, it had a video component to it as well so that you could see the lyrics on screen. And around the late 80s, when karaoke, as we know and love it today, was born. Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite things still about karaoke is that sometimes it can still have that old school look with like a nature scene, like a waterfall behind that looks like, is like, this looks like the late 80s. Yeah. Up on screen in front of me. It's a delight. Yeah. Or at least the early 90s, you know. Yeah. So, that was the West Coast. In New York,

there was a place called Singalong that opened in 87. And this was opened by, I think like four people, Zack Smith, who was a drummer for Scandal. Great band, if you remember Scandal. I remember The Warrior. Yeah, exactly. And then an attorney named Mindy Bernbaum and then Scandal's manager, Donald Zuckerman. And we also should say that they sort of put it on the Western map. But there were places already in Manhattan. There was one in Chinatown called Lotus Blossom, another one at a restaurant called Ichiban. So, there were some karaoke bars in Manhattan, but kind of like with everything else, they're like in, you know, history says until it's introduced to like white America. Right. Doesn't exist. Like it doesn't exist. Maybe we'll mention it later

in a retrospective in 30 years. Exactly. Yeah. So, but it did hit it big because of Singalong. So, are you saying that Singalong spread karaoke in America more than Dibbles did? No. Okay. Although they did franchise. I think they opened one in Buckhead here in Atlanta as the second one. Is that right? And then so Singalong was also this place that innovated the KJ, karaoke jockey. I couldn't help myself. That was totally involuntary. Jockey? Yeah. But the KJ is the guy who is like English Dan, who, you know, gets everybody psyched up to come up on stage. English Nick. English whoever. English Dan was a Yacht Rock guy, right? I'd really like to see you tonight. I don't know. Yeah, it was. It was English Dan. English Nick was a KJ. English Dan

was a Yacht Rock guy. Oh yeah. English Dan and John Ford Coley. Exactly. Yes. That was a great song too. Sure. But so the KJ was innovated at Singalongs too. And you said the second Singalong was in Buckhead, right? Yeah. I think in then Chicago was next. So, that would have been like the early 90s because the late 80s saw like the beginning of the entrenchment of karaoke and then the spread really took off in the 90s. And all of a sudden it was like pop culture everywhere, karaoke, the first time for the first time in America in the 90s. Yeah. And it's funny to go back and read. I know Dave pulled a quote from the AJC here in Atlanta, but to go back and read that New York Times article sort of describing what karaoke is is really very charming. I know.

I'm saying contemporary journalism is just so helpful. I love it. It's neat because they're like, you know, people get up on stage who have never sung before and some people are bad and some people are great, but everyone has a good time. Yeah. It's like that's karaoke. Yeah. And so, you know, people made fun of it, but it was still an extremely popular thing to do. Typically like ladies night, trivia night, karaoke night. Like it wasn't necessarily like a karaoke bar, but it was kind of everywhere. But then there were places that were karaoke bars that started to spring up too. And apparently it started to hit on hard times in the 90s that at least the trend started to die out a little bit. Grunge. I'm sure grunge had something to do with it. That was kind of a

sea change when grunge came along. But then American Idol actually revived karaoke like gang busters basically. Yeah. I think that's a good place for a nice little cliffhanger. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, we'll leave it there. See what happens next. Okay. Did American Idol last? We'll find out right after this. Yes. me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and

a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been

trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, now when you're on the road,

driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck. Get stuff you should know. All right. Okay, Chuck, lay it on them. Yeah, American Idol comes on the scene. It was huge. I mean, I'm not sure what their ratings are like these days, but in those early years, it was like one of the biggest TV shows in the history of American television. Yes. And it apparently revived karaoke because people were seeing regular folks get up on stage and sing. And I think that just sort of coincided with people remembering like, hey, wait a minute, this karaoke thing that Kurt Cobain killed, that was kind of fun. Why are we too cool for school now? Exactly. Because I mean, that was, I guess,

and kind of is what American Idol is. You got an accompanist playing and you're singing and that's, yeah. So it kind of made people like get back into it a little bit. So that was, I think, 2002 was the season, the first season where Kelly Clarkson beat Dr. Pepper's Little Sweet in the finals. Haven't you seen that Dr. Pepper had with Little Sweet? It was Little Sweet, the runner up? Yeah. Justin Guarini. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That guy. Yeah. So American Idol was big and then that was like regular America. It was like, oh yeah, let's go karaoke and I forgot about that. And then cool indie America got back into karaoke thanks to Lost in Translation.

Yeah. You know, the very famous scene in the Sofia Coppola film where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are in a K-Box having a lot of fun on their big night out in Tokyo. And it's a really great movie and a great scene unlike all of the scenes in the 2000 film Duets. One of the worst ever. And like, I mean, you know, obviously there's like Absolution, The Journey or whatever that Mario Lopez movie that Rift Tracks recently released. Like, there's obviously really, really, really bad movies out there. They're so bad. They're almost unwatchable. Duets is bad. Like on an offensive level that is really hard to put into words. It's so, because they clearly sunk money, time, effort and thought into it. And it's still

so bad. Like these other bad movies, somebody just pooped it out in like a couple of months. This is like a huge major motion picture. And it's so bad that it's almost like ticks me off just thinking about how bad that movie was and that it got released. Yeah, I never saw it. If you don't know what we're talking about, this is the movie directed by Bruce Paltrow starring his daughter Gwyneth, Huey Lewis, Paul G. Mahdi, Andre Brower, Scott Speedman, a bunch of people. And it's literally about karaoke. And I watched the trailer today and now I have that stupid cruise and song in my head and it's so bad. Yeah. Yeah. That Geico commercial where they're on the moon gives me flashbacks of duets because that's like the main song that they sing in it. Yeah.

I didn't see that commercial. I do have to say there's one thing where I didn't know was Bruce Paltrow that directs it. But there's a shot where Huey Lewis and I think Gwyneth Paltrow are checking into a hotel and the scene ends and Gwyneth Paltrow leaves the shot and Huey Lewis just stands there and he spikes the camera and blinks a couple of times and you see more clearly than you ever possibly could how blank it is inside of Huey Lewis' head. You just see it and maybe he's not blank all the time, but for that moment, he was totally blank and it's great. It's one of the great shots of all time. But that movie just... Check that out just for that. It's worthwhile. The whole movie is worthwhile just to see that one shot, but it is. It's so bad. I love Huey

Lewis too. Yeah, me too. Nothing against him. You got to see it. But Lost in Translation was the exact opposite of duets or that scene was. Yes. Yeah. It made it cool and hip again, like you said. And it was already kind of picking up steam anyway, but that definitely was like, well, Bill Murray can wear an inside out t-shirt and get up there and sing. What was it? Elvis Costello? I don't remember what he's saying. I think he did Peace Love and Understanding. Yeah, nice. So that put it back on the map and now I guess we need to talk a little bit about just the industry side of it because when you're putting hundreds and hundreds of songs out performed by different people, like these aren't the original versions. They're recorded by session players

and session singers because you always have that sort of background track going. And there's a lot of money going... I mean, karaoke is like a $10 billion industry or something and everyone gets a cut. Like if you wrote the song or performed the song or a few of the publishing rights to this song, everyone has to say, it's okay to have my song recorded for karaoke and it's okay to have it performed and each one, there are different monies that people have to pay. Yeah, there's a mechanical fee to actually record the song. There's a synchronization fee to sync up the lyrics with it, any kind of video presentation. There's a performance fee if it's not done in a K-Box, which I don't even know if we said a K-Box is just a little soundproof room that you can rent.

That's a private room for you and your friends or whatever to perform karaoke. And so you're not doing it in front of strangers. You don't have to wait for other people to go. You just go as often as you want. It is. And then it's also, it's just way more fun and most karaoke places have K-Boxes now. But if you're not in a K-Box, if it's in front of people, you probably have to also pay a performance fee as well. Not you, the karaoke person, but either the venue or the KJ or the company that's actually directing this. Because time was you used to have to get an 8-track and everything was very tightly regulated. Now there's centralized servers basically that exist in countries around the world that have these huge databases of karaoke songs. So if you go into

a karaoke place, it's just hitting up a computer, probably in the Philippines or Malaysia or something like that. And it's sending back that song and the lyrics with it onto your video screen and through the sound system. So to keep up with all of that is really, really difficult. And there's a lot of lawsuits that were filed. Probably the biggest one was Sony Music suing KTS Karaoke. They sued them for like $1.25 billion for copyright infringement. Wow. Yeah. I mean, there have been plenty of lawsuits. And the same goes with I think jukeboxes. And anytime you have a venue where people perform music, if there are cover songs performed and stuff, it's a sort of a legal quagmire. And like you said, even more complicated

these days when you can be sort of off book and just do like a YouTube version on a Wednesday night at the bar and sort of be off grid as far as people seeking money are concerned. But if you're a legit karaoke club, obviously you're doing it right or have a legit real karaoke night with a company coming in, they're doing it right as in paying all the artists and stuff like that. But there are some artists who have never signed away their rights. I think Springsteen is one. There are some people who used to, but now the songs have been removed. Like if you print songs, Bon Jovi, Abba, Coldplay have removed certain songs. Maybe because of complications or because they couldn't get everyone on board.

But if you used to sing a song and you come back a few years later and it's not available, that may be why. Yeah, it probably is. So what's weird is that you would think would kill karaoke, but the burgeoning of the internet and YouTube and just basically people creating karaoke songs at their house and being able to in like a home studio with just their laptop has actually kept it going. So karaoke doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Although it does seem to be getting more and more removed from the group. There's a new thing called Wonkara, which is a solo karaoke singing box. There's room for one person in there. And that's all the rage in Japan right now from what I understand. Maybe it's just like a practice set. Nope, it's just I just want to sing

because I want to sing. No, no, no. I mean, you know, I bet I'm sure there's been a person who's like, before I try my chops in front of people, I'm going to rent one of these for myself. Sure. But I think there's also people who are like, all I want to do is Wonkara. I don't want to talk to any of you. I'm mad at you guys. There are home karaoke machines, obviously you can buy. There are apps now. One of the great delights of my life is when my brother sends me a Smule song, SMULE. It's a singing app where he will be sitting in traffic and he'll record a full song and my brother's a better singer than me. And he'll just send me like, you know, I'll just get a text and it's attached. Like, here's a Smule from Scott Bryant. I've not heard of that. It's great. I

mean, I have it too. I don't use it much, but he's he's kind of a Smule King and you can connect with other people to do duets and stuff like that you don't even know. So there's a whole community around it. So we I know we've talked about it before, but we can't stop until we talk about my way killings and violence in general around karaoke because there has been, yeah, there was something called the my way killings, which we talked about in our is tone deafness hereditary episode. But at least six people have been killed in the Philippines during or after a performance of my way Frank Sinatra's song, my way. And there's all sorts of interpretations of why that my ways are really popular song. And so, you know, and bar fights happen. So it just was

coincidence. Other people are like, no, they really take my way very seriously in the Philippines. And if you sing it tone deaf, you're in trouble. But it wasn't just my way. Apparently, John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads is one of the bloodiest songs of all time, right? Is that a murder trigger? I guess there was a guy in Thailand who killed eight of his neighbors, eight party goers that is next to our neighbor's house, one of whom was his brother-in-law, because they would not stop singing and they sang Take Me Home Country Roads and he went over and shot them all dead. I mean, clearly other stuff going on there. Yeah, he seemed a little high strong, but like it was the karaoke that had pushed him over the edge for sure.

Yeah. What do you think Frank would say about the my way killings? You go to lighten up sometimes, baby. I tell you what, they don't kill people too, man, is Mr. Bojangles. You got that right, Sammy. Yeah. And you know, we should also mention too that it is huge in the Philippines. Like anywhere you go almost in public, there might be, it's sort of like the, the, going to Nevada and you know, there's a slot machine like every time you turn around, except there's someone singing in the Philippines. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's huge in Asia in general. Yumi has this great story about how she would kind of,

you know, go duck out and go to lunch and sing karaoke and go back to work after a word here. Good stuff. Yeah. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. Well, if you want to know more about karaoke, just get up there and do it. It's not going to kill you and you're going to be happy that you did. And since I said you're going to be happy, that means it's time for a listener mail, of course. This is from a new 15 year old fan. Hey guys, big fan of the show, writing to say hi. Just turned 15. I'm from California. I started listening in December, so I'm fairly new, but you got so quickly become my number one show. Multiple times I've heard y'all say that you lose listeners

around high school, but I hear to assure you that there are high school listeners out there. Anyway, a big reason why I love the show is because all the seemingly boring topics you cover, there's so many ordinary things that we take for granted that have such an interesting history, like barcodes, for instance. That has been one of my favorite episodes so far. I'm glad that Natalie is saying this because that's something that we love about the show is our episodes like ballpoint pens and barcodes. Yeah, that seemed boring, but turned out to be fascinating. Love it. Just today, I was asked for a random fact. I was able to talk about the failure of the Pony Express. Thanks to you guys. I also want to say thank you to everyone at Stuff

You Should Know for keeping the show so enthralling yet educational, and like so many other listeners that's helped me through the tough times. I can always count on you for laughter, education, and tangents, one of my favorite parts of the show, and then a final, very kind correction. And we welcome those because corrections have been very unkind lately. Yeah, I guess so. It almost feels like there's a new breed of listeners who's like, look, I don't know who you jerks are, but I think you're jerks, and here's everything I think that you're jerk about. There's been a lot of that. I think it's, I don't know, maybe the pandemic wearing on people. It could be. We've gone through waves of that, though, where we'll get like a new swath of listeners in, and then

like six months later, we'll hear from a lot of them again and be like, look, I'm really sorry about that first email. I really, I can't do without you guys. Yeah, you still don't know what you're talking about a lot of the times, but I like you. But I find it endearing now. It's weird. She and Natalie listened to the Walrus episode. I'm sure you got email about this, but wanted to make sure you knew the beach creatures by the Hearst Castle that you thought were sea lions are elephant seals. And that is Natalie, last name redacted. And she says, PS, don't be dumb, was a great series. Well, that was nice. I don't know that anyone else ever wrote in to correct that. So thanks a lot, Natalie. Nicely done. Totally. That was a great email, Natalie. Perfectly

done. Welcome to the fold and good luck with high school. If you want to be like Natalie and get in touch with us, you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it lightly on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through

life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever

you get your podcasts.